PRODUCT FAILURE: A LIFE CYCLE APPROACH

The aim of this paper is to introduce a life cycle perspective on the notion of failure of engineered products. Usually failure is seen as an event that can occur during the utilization stage of products. Moreover, most definitions describe failure in terms of manifest termination of expected performance. The life cycle perspective expands this view by including failures occurring outside the utilization stage, and offers a categorization of phenomena that are arguably also taken as failures in engineering. The paper starts by considering previous attempts to take the life cycle into account when dealing with product failure. A definition of failure suitable for the life cycle approach is proposed and applied to categorize a number of case stories and examples of failure occurring in different stages of the life cycle, confirming the engineering credibility of the approach. Moreover, it shows that the life cycle approach affords applying the notion of failure to events that can occur after the products are removed from service and are related to their sustainability.